jakejonesiv

The details of the Temptation are largely culled from 1 Kings chapter 19 where Elijah fasted for forty days and forty nights (1 Kings 19:8, cf Matt 4:2).

Jesus like Elijah, was in the wilderness (1 Kings 19:4) 40 days and was ministered to by angels (1 Kings 19:5, Mark 1:13).

Jesus is tempted by Satan and Elijah undergoes his own crisis of faith (1 Kings 19:4). Not exact, but close enough.

This is confirmed in that Jesus and Elijah both call disciples upon returning from the wilderness (1 Kings 19:19 ff, Mark 1:16 ff).

There are also some details derived from the Exodus tradition that have been previously noted.

What we have learned here is that the first alleged act of Jesus' ministry is derived from a retelling and recasting of Old Testamant tales. At the other end of the alleged earthly career of Jesus, the details of the crucifixion are derived from Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, and other OT texts. This use of literary texts to supply the details of the "Life of Christ" does not bode well for eye witness accounts, and even throws into doubt "oral tradition."

If there was an HJ, we hardly know anything about him. In fact, so darned little can be known of HJ with assurance (i.e. zero), that the paradigm of a single historical individual from which Christianity exploded is obsolete.

Jake Jones IV

Chili

Nah, they just match because the 40 day fast is a necessary condition in the rite of passage, which is universal to mankind. Note that we are beyond religion here now but are still in the wake of religion.Beyond the faculty of reason.Just beyond the crisis of faith. The switch was thrown (Zamjatin) when Christ was born and here we are in the royal 'honeymoon' just after the wedding in Cana. It is where consumation takes place. When reason returns the shepherds are recalled to be diciples and start a new beginnning on the second go around. The shepherds were the eidetic images of Joseph who now is called Jesus.There was a historical Jesus and there have been many more historical Jesus' since to cause the explosion. They are called Jesuits [by nature] until they become Christian with a life of their own. Some of these return to the Church while others will just go about life in their own way.

Clivedurdle

I quoted "snow on snow" as an example of a literary device. Might "40 days and forty nights" be similar in the original language, but has lost its meaning in translation?

What of non time use of forty? Ali Baba?

I note no responses to the possibility that we are looking at a literary device.

Chili

Forty days and forty nights does have an exhaustive ring to it that goes well with fasting. Luke tells us that Jesus was conducted by the HS to the desert (he was still "full of it") where he was tempted by the devil but he ate nothing. At the end of the fourty days Jesus was hungry and there was that devil again now with the temptations = food for thought.

youngalexander

Man Myth & Magic (or via: amazon.co.uk) Forty pg 1023:
And there is much more.

As above Fasting pg 918:
I noticed this myself in my recent extensive examination of ancient sites. At Eleusius we got damn hungary after 40 mins and had to break for lunch.

Solo

Short term and long term fasting represent medically very different issues. Generally, no solid, or semi-solid food intake for more than one-two weeks (depending on what is in the liquids) pose grave risks to the whole digestive track, specifically to the ability of the stomach, duodenum amd small intestine to process food, and for the whole of the intestinal track to maintain the life-sustaining flora. The ensuing pathogeny may be irreversible. Incidentally, the decease of the digestive that begins to occur after the period indicated is excruciatingly painful in its final stages.

One cannot take a forty-day fast literally.

Jiri

aa5874

So, once again it is highly unlikely that the fasting of Jesus is true. When will the fiction end?

Clivedurdle

I am finding it fascinating that there are so many detailed accounts of mythology available, but for some fascinating reason Christianity (and Judaism and Islam?) get a get out of jail free card and are rarely studied from a mythological and literary perspective. Encyclopaedias of mythology miss out Xianity! These religions propaganda has been highly effective so that no one sees that the emperor has no clothes!

We have gospels that are clearly based on other writings and yet it is believed they are relating history? Maybe these alleged "oral traditions" are also storytelling traditions that go back hundreds of years?

I will repeat it again - my xian upbringing continuously emphasised Christ had come to fulfill the scriptures and was very proud to find and preach the connections with the Old Testament. It was not for me a dead book, but was used as evidence of the truth of the good news of Jesus's death and resurrection!

But the power of the "old old story" is not from its reality or historicity but from the fact that it is glorious myth! Lewis and Tolkien almost got it - both professors of English, but hung on to the propaganda of an HJ. That was probably what their time and place would allow.

Seriously I formally claim Tolkien and Lewis as proto mythicists.

Solo

You need to understand the difference between "fictionalizing" and "symbolizing". Jesus struggle with the devil is not a free-form fiction but a complex religious symbologem of an ordeal, in which a godhead-to-be proves his mettle, and confirms his status. I have already pointed out that the allusion to fasting is present only in Matthew and that it relates to a writing within a community with a stricter religious discipline.
The whole post-baptism episode of Jesus closely parallels what is today called a manic fugue (actually, his fugue probably started when he bolted from Nazareth or Capernaum) or wherever he really lived. After John, he experienced a strong euphoric high which then turned into a typical post-peak psychosis. The struggles with the devil in the desert, represent the reduction of manic excitement in which the subject recovers his/her mental factulties: i.e. the temptation of the devil to turn stone into bread, and the offer of the earthly kingdoms signifies Jesus' struggle with delusions of grandeur, his refusal to jump of the spire of the temple, his resistance to paradoxical mentation in which the subjects realizes the "unreality" of some of the brain trickery - in this case, the common delusion of levitational powers.

In this context of recovery Jesus' feeling hunger would signify the return of normal appetite.

Jiri

emphryio

No.

Here's an entire book online from long ago by Dr. Shelton. http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201...020127.toc.htm
He regularly had patients fast for 30 plus days. A healthy (average weight) person can fast for 50 to 80 days. He had at least one obese patient that fasted for over 100 days. The main danger is trying to start eating again too quickly. I don't know that Shelton was correct that fasting was good for health but it's clear that you don't die an excruciating death in a few weeks unless you don't drink water or have something else wrong with you.

For example:
http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201...20127.ch19.htm
Fasts of long duration are on record. Mr. Macfadden records one of ninety days; nine of the Cork hunger strikers fasted for ninety-four days; thousands have fasted up to forty days and longer. Many fasts have gone to fifty, sixty and seventy days and longer, McSwiney died on the seventy-eighth day of his fast. While this hunger-strike was on, I heard Dr. Lindlahr tell of a fast of seventy days which he conducted. Dr. Dewey records one of three months.

Etc, etc throughout the book.